The problem lies in the fact that working reproducibly often requires some time investment, something which many scientists working in competitive fields claim they can’t afford. Florian Markowetz from the University of Cambridge counters these claims by saying “not to ask what you can do for reproducibility, but to ask what can reproducibility do for you!”

We are so good at it, actually, that for the last two years the official announcement of the team building challenge included the statement: “The goal of this exercise is to make sure the Markowetz lab doesn’t win again.”

Last year, we had succumbed to the mounting pressure: When asked to build a life-like animal from paper and cardboard we produced what even optimistically can only be called a ‘roadkill turtle‘. No wonder we came last in the competition. No photographic evidence survives (we made sure of that).

At the end is a surprisingly long Q&A about what type of analysis did and did not go into the iconic Figure 1 of Costanzo et al 2010. I need to learn the magic words “What a great question! Let’s discuss it offline…”